Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and, unfortunately, a little bit worse. “Pitch Perfect 2” is so, so very sequel. It finds room for characters who have no business returning for the second installment. It plays matchmaker, and lots of it. Money is not an issue for anyone at any point, even though there are several instances where it should be (these are college kids, after all). It gives far, far too much screen time to Rebel Wilson, and it has some galling product placement (Pantene and Dave and Buster’s, we’re looking in your direction).

In spite of all this, it’s also a massive crowd pleaser, filled with some ridiculously fun and elaborate song and dance routines and enough quality jokes to help the audience suffer through the less funny material (again, Wilson, mostly). The movie’s story structure is nearly identical to the first “Pitch Perfect.” If it’s missing anything, it’s the element of surprise. No one saw the first one coming, which is why it was a left-field hit, but this time, audiences are prepared, and can therefore see every plot development coming down Broadway.

The Barden University a cappella singing group the Barden Bellas, who have now won three straight college championships thanks to the leadership of Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick), perform for the President at Lincoln Center and suffer yet another humiliating mishap on stage that leads to their suspension, and the near-certain demise of the group. There is a loophole in the terms of their punishment, though, that allows them to compete for the world championship, and if they win that, the Bellas will be reinstated. No American group has ever won the world title, though, and they face stiff competition at the hands of Das Sound Machine, a group of two dozen German men and women who look like they were manufactured in a lab, a lab with lots of steroids. Cue the “Rocky” theme.

Those who have seen the first film recognize the pattern. Embarrassing incident leads to ostracism (now on a global scale, as opposed to a local one), which leads to loss of identity, which leads to infighting, which leads to self-discovery and redemption. The biggest difference is that the main source of conflict is not from within (the power struggle between Beca and Aubrey), but from the hilariously stereotypical leaders of Das Sound Machine. It’s tempting to criticize the film for this, but the life of a singing group is one of strict routine, so it makes sense that the scripts would be similar as well. They learn new songs, they perform, and they work on their act. Oh, and if they’re in college, they go to class, though no one actually does that here.

Still, no singing group anywhere on the planet is suspending Fat Amy in the air, ever, so the setup rings false. It’s a ‘cart before the horse’ plot device, where you need A to happen in order to get to B, so you make A the dumbest thing imaginable. Screenwriter Kay Cannon is funny, but I bet she wrote this scene while a studio executive held a gun to her head.

A leaner, better movie was within reach here, and they only needed to cut one thing, namely the relationship between Wilson’s Fat Amy and Bumper (Adam DeVine), one of the aforementioned characters who shouldn’t have returned. It’s a nonstarter, and its exclusion would take seven or eight minutes (as well as the one song that feels completely out of place with the others) out of the film. That may not sound like much, but it’s the screen time equivalent of “Stairway to Heaven.” That’s a lot of time to spend on something that doesn’t work. Have you seen those videos of people trying to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon? Rebel Wilson is cinnamon; she’s best used in small doses.

Elizabeth Banks handles herself quite well in her full-length feature directorial debut. The cast looks comfortable with her behind the camera, and she wisely keeps the camera work simple. (The film’s last shot is a head scratcher, though.) The expanded cast means that Jesse (Skylar Astin) gets less screen time, but the scenes at the recording studio where Beca is interning (Keegan-Michael Key is the house producer) yield some serious gold. Banks and John Michael Higgins return to provide more inane commentary, and while those moments are amusing, they feel like they should be in a different film. The jokes don’t mix with the rest of the material, and no matter how offensive Higgins’ character becomes, he’s still no match for Fred Willard’s play-by-play in “Best in Show.”

The most impressive trick “Pitch Perfect 2” pulls is the two reality checks it provides the audience. Mash-up genius Beca gets a rude awakening at the recording studio regarding her skill set, presumably the first time anyone’s told her she wasn’t the Best Thing Ever, and new Bella Flo (Chrissie Fit), a Latina immigrant with a tragic past, is a constant reminder to the girls that their problems are definitely of the First World variety. They do this for laughs (for Flo’s bits, anyway), but both bits send an important message: the world will not submit to your awesomeness. You need to earn it.

“Pitch Perfect 2” is safe as kittens, which is both a good and a bad thing. It sticks so closely to the plot of the first film that there’s almost a “22 Jump Street” vibe to it, an open acknowledgement that, yep, we’re just making the first film all over again. For the most part, that’s fine, but for a movie that prides itself on sisterhood and the harsh truths that come with growing up, they should have dug a little deeper into the characters, and what makes them tick. Swap out Fat Amy and Bumper for that, and we have an entirely different, and much better, film.

It’s not often – on the big screen, anyway – that director McG traffics in human emotion. His films are mostly about the slam and the bang, so his attachment to a movie like “3 Days to Kill” is a bit surprising at first. This is not to say that the movie doesn’t have some slam-bang moments (it does), but that it operates at a different speed than McG’s other work. The father-daughter relationship comes first, though murder isn’t far behind. The story, by Luc Besson (“The Professional”), bites off more than it can chew, and it requires “Taken” levels of disbelief to excuse carnage that our government would surely have to answer for on a public stage, but the acting performances elevate the material from ‘predictable’ to ‘predictable but fun.’

Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) is a seasoned field agent for the CIA. During an operation where he and his team are assigned to dispose of an arms dealer known as The Albino (Tómas Lemarquis), Ethan passes out after chasing down their target, wakes up in a hospital and is told he is gravely ill and has three months to live. Ethan plans on making the most of his time by reconciling with his estranged wife Tina (Connie Nielsen) and their daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld). No sooner does he promise Tina that he’s finished with the CIA than he receives a visit from fellow CIA operative Vivi Delay (Amber Heard), who was tasked with taking down the Albino’s financier The Wolf (Richard Sammel) at the same time that Ethan was supposed to take out the Albino. Vivi has access to an experimental drug that may keep Ethan alive, and she will share it with him if he agrees to help her finish the job, as Ethan is the only one who knows what the Wolf looks like. Ethan reluctantly accepts, and it is not long before the unpredictable nature of being a hired killer makes life complicated for a man who already has a reputation with his angry teenaged daughter of never being there for her. Oh, and a family of squatters has taken over his Paris apartment while he was away, and it is against the law if he kicks them out.

This is a busy movie for sure, and while it’s clear what message Besson was trying to send (family togetherness triumphs over all things), and the message is a good one, his multi-pronged attack on the family front serves as more of a distraction than a supportive ‘B’ story. At the same time, the squatter family’s youngest son, and his fascination with Ethan, is a clear callback to Natalie Portman’s character in “The Professional,” which adds a nice level of meta to the proceedings. Another piece of the plot is of the rom-com variety (Mommy has to leave town on business for a few days, so newly retired/secretly not retired contract killer Daddy is responsible for his rebellious daughter), but it leads to some sweet moments, at least when it’s not forcing Costner to maim innocent people. “3 Days to Kill” is the story of a conflicted man, and that conflict manifests itself in more ways than one, at times to its detriment.

Bonus points, then, to the casting agent for getting the right actors in the right parts, because Costner, Steinfeld and even Heard (she speaks early in the movie about having to work with small budgets, yet dresses like a world-class call girl/dominatrix from start to finish) make this movie a hell of a lot more watchable than it otherwise would be. There is definitely a bit of Crash Davis in Costner’s performance (he even cracks a joke about how to properly punch someone that will have “Bull Durham” fans laughing), and Steinfeld is just the right kind of difficult; she has issues, but she hasn’t gone off the rails. Nielsen, sorry, is window dressing, but Marc Andréoni and Bruno Ricci have nice bits as men associated with the Albino that Ethan uses to his advantage.

“3 Days to Kill” is the kind of movie that uses excess to reinforce something tender. It doesn’t always make sense, but as long as you stay within the lines, as it were, and do not consider the ripple effect that the actions of these characters might have on a larger stage, the movie works…sort of.

It should be stated for the record that while the editorial ‘we’ was used for the title of this column, the truth is that these are my picks and solely my picks. Let the first person speak begin.

The Academy Awards have become a bit of a bore in the last few years. There have been next to no surprises in the major categories, except for perhaps Marion Cotillard winning Best Actress in 2008 for “La Vie en Rose” or Alan Arkin winning Best Supporting actor in 2007 for “Little Miss Sunshine.” For the most part, it’s decided pretty early who’s going to win, which totally sucks, if you ask me. Of course, there are categories where there is a performance that clearly stands out above the others, but in many instances, people win their Oscars not because they’ve delivered something otherworldly, but because it’s their time, and they’re due, or other such nonsense. These aren’t lifetime achievement awards, and this isn’t a welfare system. If you give the award to the worthy party the first time around, there will be no need to “pay them back” later (cough, Al Pacino and Denzel Washington).

Take Tilda Swinton, for example. Do you know why she won the Academy Award for Supporting Actress? It’s because the voters knew that “Michael Clayton” was going to be shut out in every other category, so they threw Swinton a bone just so the movie walked away with at least one award. What the hell kind of logic is that? Did she really give the best performance or not? She was perfectly fine in the movie, but there was nothing extraordinary about it, certainly not compared to her hilariously stone-hearted harpy in “Burn After Reading.” Needless to say, the Academy’s predictability of late has led me to rebel, which is why on Sunday, I’d love nothing more than to hear the following five names be read instead of what we will probably hear.

“The King’s Speech” is a wonderful little film. It was #7 on my list of top movies of 2010. But that story has been done many, many times before, while “Inception” was so layered that it took 10 years for Christopher Nolan to finish it. Small stories are good stories, but when someone dares to, pardon the pun, dream like Nolan did here – and better yet, pull it off, which he does in spades – that should be rewarded. It would also serve as a warning shot across the bows of every action movie director that story matters, damn it, and to get rid of the jive-talking robots.

We called it three years ago: Christian Bale will win an Oscar before it’s said and done, and more likely sooner than later. Now it’s about to happen, and strangely, I wish it weren’t.

First off, credit where credit is due. Bale positively disappeared into the role of Dicky Eklund, shedding a bunch of weight to resemble the body type of a crack addict and sounding like an authentic born-and-raised Southie. It was flashy without being gimmicky, and that is the key to Oscar glory. There is just one teensy problem; his character doesn’t support the story – he’s a distraction to it, and every time the movie becomes Dicky-centric, it loses momentum. Which brings us to Rush, the heart and soul of “The King’s Speech” and without whom, as Roger Ebert astutely observed, “the movie is unthinkable.” “The Fighter” could survive without Dicky; “The King’s Speech” is dead in the water without Lionel.

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

Now, here is the supporting performance that drives “The Fighter.” Like Bale, Melissa Leo also disappears into the character of Alice Ward, but unlike Bale, there isn’t that sense of watching someone act. Instead, it was more like watching someone be, something Leo is remarkably good at. She also seems to have a fondness for getting ugly on screen, if this and “Conviction” are any indication.

Of course, the general consensus is that Leo and Amy Adams will split the “Fighter” vote, opening the door for Steinfeld to become the latest child to win an Oscar…but she’s not really in a supporting role, is she? Nope, the academy rigged the vote so she wouldn’t have to go up against Annette Bening and Natalie Portman. Don’t you think that, should Steinfeld win, it would feel a little hollow that they bent the rules for her? Just sayin’.

Current Frontrunner: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
Colin Firth was humbled and regal. Jesse Eisenberg fired Aaron Sorkin’s one-liners like a sharpshooter. James Franco, meanwhile, carried his movie from start to finish. It was a one-man show, and better yet, thanks to the savvy editing, it didn’t feel like a one-man show. I think Franco’s biggest problem is that a lot of people refused to see the movie on principle once they realized they would have to watch someone (pretend to) cut his arm off, and I get that; I didn’t want to see it either, but was positively blown away by the movie, and Franco’s performance, once I did.

Firth has the buzz because he’s well liked and has carved out a nice, well regarded filmography for himself. But the race to an Oscar isn’t a marathon; it’s a sprint. And from here, Franco was running faster than everyone else.

In the interest of full disclosure, my #1 movie of 2010 was “Black Swan.” For the sake of the awards, though, I’m changing my tune.

What we’re looking at is something akin to when “Forrest Gump” beat “Pulp Fiction” and “The Shawshank Redemption” for Best Picture in 1995 (though if we’re honest, few of us knew how truly great “Shawshank” was until it was released on video a few months after the Oscars). The Academy has a chance to award a movie that will transcend time – there is a reason many people speak of “The Social Network” as a movie that will define a generation – but they won’t, and I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps the elder members of the academy can relate to “The King’s Speech” better than they can to a movie about a group of kids haggling in court over Internet money, so they’re choosing what makes them comfortable. That makes sense, I suppose. But here’s the thing – odds are, someone is going to make a movie a lot like “The King’s Speech” in the next 12 to 18 months. You won’t see another movie like “The Social Network,” however, for a long, long time.

Oh, and I’d also love to see “Exit Through the Gift Shop” win Best Documentary. The movie rules.